Dictionary

ABSAM (shrine)

Marian sanctuary in the Austrian Tyrol. In January 1797 an eighteen-year-old native girl had a premonition that her father had met with an accident in the salt mines where he worked. In her anxiety she looked out the window and saw the face of the Virgin Mary appearing on the window glass. Her father reported a serious accident at the mine that afternoon but he was unhurt. The glass panel was removed, washed, and scraped in an attempt to remove the image, but all attempts to obliterate the image failed. The cherished glass was placed in a small chapel nearby, and six candles are always burning before the picture, which has become a place of pilgrimage.